Tag Archives: Digital Currency

— On why the French Assinagts and Mandats did not succeed back in 1790

Thanks for providing us with some detailed historical info on the earlier French version of real estate backed currencies, Assignats and Mandats. As could be clearly observed even in your article, the French had the right idea but the wrong execution back in the 1790s, let alone the fact that they were backed by the stolen land!

Even the subsequent Rentenmarks circulated more than one hundred year later in 1924 did not have the necessary legal or technological infrastructure to make it work properly. That is the whole premise of launching the TARELV concept and the associated exchange rate pegging system in 2011 as the modern day new innovative quantitative finance knowhow and method such as FARJHO and the block chain payment ledger technology provided by the invention of Bitcoins could finally make these ideas realistic.

— On possible different types of real estate that could be used to back up currencies:

Absolutely. They are not mutually exclusive. All forms of real estate backing will happen sooner or later. Just remember that lien encumbered properties will not work very well, no matter how small a portion that lien may be. So a portion of the unencumbered equity of a decent office building, a hotel or an apartment could certainly work just fine if the owner is a credible and trustworthy entity.

— On why FARJHO Fund is better:

When you get to analyze the quality and characteristics of underlying assets, you will see the problems with conventional REITs. I understand that you may have mentioned that to express the generic concept.

A FARJHO Fund (or FARJHO itself) has many advantages. Here is to name a few: (1) It is a pure un-leveraged equity, hence will never get foreclosed; (2) Via FARJHO, each batch of the t-coins will be mined and created by a group of regular homeowners in any part of the world, hence the de-centralized democracy nature that the crypto-currency enthusiasts love so much about could be maintained.

— On Bitcoin’s decentralized Utopian fantasy:

The abuse of fiat currencies and debts have proven in history repeatedly as the root cause of financial instability. In many currency crises, e.g. Asian, Ruble in 1998-1999 etc., the issuers were not the ones who manipulated them but rather the sudden lack of confidence by all participants. That is the problem. Lack of confidence all of a sudden.

Currencies need to be backed by assets, gold standard or real estate (German Rentenmark, French Assignats, Mandats etc.) just like debts need to be collaterized by real assets or equity to provide stability and confidence. That is a problem I was trying to address with TARELV way before these new Bitcoins things even came on stage.

Now for Bitcoins or any other current crypto currencies to claim to call those national currencies fiat is like the pot calling the kettle black.

The idea that these new digital currencies are decentralized or frictionless in transactions is simply a Utopian fantasy. Once they have gained momentum, they will still need many third parties to maintain their ongoing stability to become successful anyway or they die. Their success could only be transient and ephemeral. If they are successful in commanding confidence by finding a backer, layers of middlemen and interest groups will then also come in to impose transaction fees and could make it even worse than those currencies they were intended to replace.

Don’t we already see the same scenario replaying itself over and over again in modern politics? You overthrow a dictator and then came chaos until the next dictator comes again to provide stability.

So the crypto currency’s only advantage is tech oriented, i.e. payment efficiency. Don’t expect them to come to build a Utopian libertarian society for you.

The real estate or home equity backed digital currencies (t-coins) that I am proposing is different because it is a wide open platform for all kinds of possible grassroots homeowners, for-profit institutions, non-profit organizations and national governments alike. It will be taken out of the monopoly of the government’s hands. For the lack of new terminology at the moment, it is a FARJHO fund from a group of homeowners in a geographical area who mine and create the new batch of t-coins.

To put it in a simple word, it will replace the bad “their” dictator with a new benign “our” democratic dictator. 🙂